This morning I noticed an interesting item in my news feed that CA SiteMinder has been expanded to support web applications and services running on JBoss Enterprise Middleware. This means that popular platforms such as JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, and JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform are now fully in play for CA SiteMinder customers.
Anyone who is familiar with enterprise software can tell horror stories about its acquisition & maintenance costs, not to mention the frustration that comes when an internal team identifies a bug that must await a formal fix from the vendor because its root cause lies in the source code. Only those who have experienced this pain can fully appreciate the value of the open source model. The CoreBlox team leveraged an open source platform during the early stages of the company and we were continually impressed by the passionate community that backed it up and was always willing to help. It's encouraging to see a large corporation like CA recognize the importance of extending SiteMinder support to those who choose to build their infrastructures (either solely or partly) on open source technologies. Well done, CA!